Lacey Chabert is back this year with Hallmark’s Christmas At Castle Hart. She has had her ups and downs with holiday movies. Let’s find out if this is one of the good ones.
Brooke (Lacey Chabert) and her sister, Margot (Ali Hardiman), got fired from their catering jobs. Since they have some money saved from an inheritance, they decide to go to Ireland to track down their late father’s family. As they chat to locals about tracking down the family, they meet Aidan Hart (Stuart Townsend), the Earl of Glaslough. Aidan and his sister, Siobhan (Aoife Spratt), mistake her for an elite event planner and hire her to plan the annual Christmas party for the castle.
I was so bored by this movie. It would have been awesome if they dug deep into the genealogy plotline but they didn’t. They decided to focus on the event planning part, which is the least interesting part of the movie. How cool would the movie have been if Aidan used his wealth and power to help the girls travel around Ireland to find their father’s family? There is a scene where Margot gets some help from the Duchess of Abercorn (Kate O'Toole) but we don’t get to see the Duchess doing any of the work. It’s basically Margot saying “My dad had a thing that said Freedom….” then the Duchess off-screen doing the detective work. It would have been so much better if we saw how she figured it out.
Otherwise, Christmas At Castle Hart is just like every other terrible Hallmark movie except with slightly better acting. I suppose it’s watchable if you are in it for the Irish accents. A lot of the cast is actually Irish so the accents are one of the best parts of the movie. But if you are looking for an interesting plot, go somewhere else.